Former DOJ Lawyer Under Trump Says She Is ‘Haunted by What I Did’

A former lawyer at the ⚖️Department of Justice (DOJ) is speaking out about the work she did under President Donald Trump’s tenure which she claims “nearly ended” the nation’s democratic system of government.

Erica Newland, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2016-2018, penned an op-ed in The New York Times over the weekend to share her account of what it was like working in the office of the DOJ “where presidents turn for permission slips that say their executive orders and other contemplated actions are lawful.”

Newland began by noting that she joined the department in 2016 and “never harbored delusions about a Trump presidency.”

“Mr. Trump readily volunteered that his agenda was to disassemble our democracy, but I made a choice to stay at the Justice Department — home to some of the country’s finest lawyers — for as long as I could bear it,” she said.

However, she explained that she believed she could serve the country better by “pushing back from within than by keeping my hands clean.”

In her role, Newland says she worked to minimize the “immediate harmful impacts” of Trump’s executive orders and make them more acceptable to courts.

She provided the example of how lawyers in her office worked on Trump’s efforts to ban travel from “predominantly Muslim countries.” She noted that the first order was “rushed out the door” and struck down by the courts.

However, in 2018, a third travel ban order, which “benefited from more time and attention from the department’s lawyers,” was upheld by the Supreme Court.